Music, language of the mortal soul. The face of twilight, The mouth of bitterness made lyrical, Eyes closed on poignant joys that might have been! A profile turned to life, and yet beyond ... Reborn, transfigured; penetrating sense To gather an acute expressiveness Vibrant within itself: all our lost lives! --We must play gently to the living dead-- Fingers outstretched, by that responsive lid Where Angel harps lie buried at full length, Yet still in touch and resonant--Arise To laying on of hands-- Invisible, a phantom of pure sound Voices the spirit sitting there, awakes The sighing, and the soaring and the beat (O dispossessed and silenced King: my heart!) Until we too are echos of that tide, Where winds and waves become articulate, Our being tossed so high, beyond itself, Winged by the elements! Our human weight of woe no longer felt Until we meet --By some familiar fall of minor chords-- The inner God of Sorrow face to face. LOVE'S COMRADES You say I've lived too long in France And wearied of the senses' dance? Like fresh air in an opium den You'll lead me out--to where? and when? .... I fear no country's ready yet For our complexities: forget The best of flesh and food to go A'roaming o'er the world, and know Discomfort's great surprises few--? No, let me travel just to you! WITH TWO DWARF JAPANESE MAPLES These ancient trees for your new room. May many happy evenings fall With their reflections on the wall, Making embroideries of the gloom, And let their leaves of red and green Rustle with small desires and fears, But never water them with tears For all that is or has not been. Lives pass as shadows on a screen, Whether you dream or sing or sew, Or if some time Regret instead Should bow, my Loveliest, your head, Send me a leaf so I shall know: For Hope the green, for Love the red. AVERTISSEMENT. _Her name begins as Love begins,_ _Mine as "November", "Nevermore"._ No thousand nights and one between these covers, No miniatures, enluminures or dyes-- For art is but a prostitute that hovers To court outsiders--you alone may prize These pages which your idle hand unties?-- ... Leaving art to artists--we, loves lovers, Keep for out-worn Beauty a disguise. --(A line traced round a shadow as it dies, Some semblance of the scattered rose recovers?)-- So making everything seem otherwise: Associations are our deities! --And ivy leaves, transparent eggs of plovers Are fragments of the feast they symbolize.-- Here, visible as sleeping Eros, lies A book of dreams and broken memories, A living past for which blind Love has eyes? THE FLUTE-PLAYER